OMG, my mother used to do the same thing! She once gave a similar earful to a neighbor kid who thought it was funny to make hilariously incompetent obscene phone calls to the girls on our street. He'd repeatedly called our house, and he did his very sad "breather" thing whenever I answered the phone. So after a few…

This is the current American political climate in a nutshell, isn't it? Instead of wanting everyone in our society to have access to a better life, we're supposed to be angrily envious of anyone who just might be less badly underpaid than we are.

Ugh. A person who would have been my uncle if he'd stayed married to my aunt pulled a stunt like this back in the 1950s. Told my aunt (my mom's older sister) he was taking a trip to visit his brother, who was recovering from a serious illness in another city. The trip part wasn't a lie, but everything else was.…

Mine was a small-ish (~75 people), semi-formal morning wedding with a lunch reception, all of which took place in the Boston suburbs. In terms of today's dollars, it probably came in at less than $8,000. I bought my dress at the small independent bridal shop that was down the street from my apartment. The reception…

Same here! I've loved broccoli since childhood. And I share your feelings about ham. I find it extremely boring, even the really upscale kinds. I had some top-of-the-line jamón in Spain, and I was really done with the stuff after the first experience.

Not necessarily. Most sources recommend against refreezing things that have been thawed, but that's not so much about food safety as about loss of food quality (taste, texture, etc.) Of course, if you don't know how long something has been either thawed from the freezer or left in the refrigerator, you can't rely on…

I'll have to try the cauliflower thing, since we really love our cruciferous vegetables. I usually use almond milk in everything, for a variety of household food intolerance reasons. The colcannon was a special indulgence; when I make plain mashed potatoes, I use very little butter (but always the real stuff) and lots…

You gotta love those viral "recipes". Hamburgers that look like cake, cake that looks like hamburgers, hamburger cake that looks like a banana split ...

Shakshuka rocks! I'd never heard of it until a couple of years ago; successfully made a batch for a quick dinner that night. But it does look very odd when photographed — sort of like someone caught the result of a volcanic eruption in a common kitchen skillet.

Whoa, he made colcannon! I also celebrated St. Patrick's Day by making it (for the first time ever), and I'm not even Irish!

Nerd that I am, the control group question was the first one I had as well. I don't normally watch food shows, I cook from scratch quite a bit (and enjoy it), and I don't put on weight when I'm eating most of my meals at home.

Ugh. I got so effing sick from overindulgence in LIIT once. What can I say? I was young and stupid, I hadn't eaten anything beforehand, and it was a hot day. Downed two in quick succession while out for after-work drinks with some friends. This all took place at a Boston-area restaurant bar that was known for its…

I'm significantly lactose-intolerant myself, but the higher the fat content of the dairy product, the less of a problem it causes for me. I think it's because the lactose is water-soluble; butter, for example, probably has little or no lactose in it.

I love red. My favorite shades (to look at) lean towards fuschia/American Beauty, but they don't look great on me. I'm much better in rust or maroon — something that tends just a tad towards orange or brown.

I like ranch dressing, but I don't get the ranch-worship any more than I get the ranch-loathing. It's just salad dressing. A dip. A table condiment. Whatever elevated it to the level where everything on the table needs to be either dredged through it or drowned under it? It makes no more sense than covering everything…

That's the point. Fungal spores and other pathogens laugh at flip-flops.

Of course, there was the guy who couldn't understand why supermarkets carried kosher salt but never Christian salt, and decided to remedy the situation:

When I was a college student and had a much more volatile temper than I do now, I once encountered a department-store salesperson who seemed to want to make me scream with rage while simultaneously making her trainee cry. I was buying some dinnerware as a gift for my parents, and then planned to catch a bus to their…

I actually punted a toddler while in line at a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles office. Tripped over the poor kid while his mom, who was behind me in line, was completely ignoring him.

Hovering enrages me. It's the single best way to splash pee and worse all over a public toilet seat. The reason women don't want to sit on the seat in the ladies' room is because women don't sit on the seat in the ladies' room.